Change is Imminent
by Lita12576
Summary: Amber is just your average 25 year old. She went to college and kept up a job that barely paid the bills. And, well, she was actually satisfied. And then, well, along came the strange green ring. So much for simple. OC
1. Prologue

Day to Day Life

It was simple. Wake up, brush my teeth, take a shower, and fix the hair. Put on clothes, and hurry to my used, dark blue mustang, because I'm always late when I leave. Grab a coffee from Starbucks, and drive over the speed limit to my college classes. Major in astronomy. Minor in mythology. Eat a quick lunch at some random café, and zoom off to the part time job that I work. Waitressing. Not very fun, but it pays the bills. Most of the time, anyways. Drive home, and order Chinese or pizza, because I'm too tired to cook. Stumble to my bedroom, and fall asleep before my face hits the pillow.

That was my life.

It was hard.

It was simple.

_Was._

My life was that way until I was 25, and then, all hell broke loose. Now you're like "What? Boyfriend? Got fired? Featured on the news?" Yeah. I wish. That would be a lot less complicated. Of course, leave it to me to land myself in the middle of a space drama. Meet some aliens, get mentored by one. Learn how to kick ass. Fight in an intergalactic Fall in love with a real life E.T. Now, you're like "Okay. Yeah, right. Nice fantasy, honey." But I'm not kidding. It went a little bit like this.


	2. Chapter 1

Just a Dream

I was dreaming. I knew because my father and sister couldn't possibly be alive. We were all sitting on the rocks by our favorite place. The waterfall, in the forest we lived by. Nobody else knew of it. It was _our _place.

The waterfall itself was about 15 feet tall, and it was hidden from the trails by rocks and greenery. Strangely enough, it didn't make much noise. The only reason we had found it was because my little sister, Amy, had wandered off the trail. And we looked _everywhere._ It was totally by accident that we found the waterfall and the stream. And her, captivated by its beauty. 7 year olds _were_ distracted easily. Of course, my dad and I had run up to her, peppered her with kisses with orders to _never do that again_! Once we were sure that she understood, we had directed our attention to the magnificent water display. We had stayed there the rest of the day, and had returned on a regular basis.

I loved it there. But I hadn't returned since they died, in a fire. I couldn't bring myself to. It held too many memories. And that was why I knew I was dreaming. Because we were all crowded on the largest flat rock by the falls, talking, laughing, and eating. Being a family. But I had no family anymore. They were dead.

I jolted awake, breathing heavily, the dream still fresh in my mind. Calming myself down, I looked around my bedroom. It was still bright yellow. The window was still open. A cold breeze drifted in, raising goose bumps on my skin. I felt one lone tear dripping down my cheek.

I hadn't dreamt of my deceased family members in a while. This had been a relief to me. Until now. It had happened a few years ago. I had been at work. It was on a slow day when I got the phone call. The phone call telling me that my father, Jackson, and my sister, Amy, were dead. I had frozen up, phone still in hand, when one of the other workers, a close friend of mine, Rachael, asked me what was wrong. I remembered her eyes widening when she grabbed the phone from my hands, when the doctor told her of what had occurred. She had hung up, and, not saying a word, she had wrapped her arms around me, orange hair pulled back into a sloppy bun.

That was six years ago. Six long, hard, simple years.

I looked at my alarm clock, which rested on a small bedside table. It was 2 a.m. I knew that I should be going back to sleep. I did, after all, have school at 8. But I knew that sleep wasn't going to come. Not tonight.

I swung my legs to the side of the bed. I shuddered slightly as my feet touched the cold wooden flooring. My stomach growled slightly. Well, then. Food it is. Beef Lo-Mein sounded good. I padded towards my mostly-unused kitchen. I pulled out the leftovers of Lo-Mein and grabbed a fork.

I sighed slightly as the flavor of the first bite hit my taste-buds. As I finished my food, I pulled the book on my table towards me. I set down the fork, and attempted to get lost in the world of aliens, emerald eyes, and magical hammers. Of course. For once, I could not get lost in the mythical world of Thor, and his mischief-filled brother, Loki. Don't judge. I do minor in mythology, after all.

And so, I decided to go for a run. I always preferred running at night, instead of day, anyways. I pulled out my knee length leggings, yanked an A.C.D.C. shirt over my head, and slipped into my tennis shoes. I took the stairs to the bottom of the building, and slipped out the door. The security guard called after me "Be safe out there, Amber!"

I smiled slightly. Oh so protective, Mr. Wells. Well, I guess he is a security guard.

I started jogging, enjoying the cold night air as it blew softly against my skin. It was refreshing, and I soon got lost in the feel of the burn starting to make its self known in my legs. Houses started appearing. Then they started spacing out.

After about 40 minutes, it started to rain. Not long after, my clothes and hair started sticking to me uncomfortably. I looked around, and saw a house, with a sign that said "For Rent" on it. I wasn't paying attention to that though.

I was paying attention to its broken stairs. I was paying attention to the body that was sprawled lifelessly across them.

* * *

**Author's Note: ****Thank you to all of those who reviewed, favorited, and followed my story! I never expected to get that much less so quickly after I posted the prologue. I probably won't be able to update so quickly, because I'm going up to my grandparents' house for the next few days, so I won't have access to my computer. Again, thank you! ~**_**Lita**_


	3. Chapter 2

I just froze there, right on the sidewalk. What should I do? Was the question that blew through my head on repeat. I figured that I should pull out my cell phone, and call the police. That was the most logical thing to do, right? But something stopped me. I don't know what it was. Curiosity? Intuition? I had no idea.

I don't know what urged me towards that porch. What compelled me through that overgrown sea of grass, which looked like it hadn't been cut in years? Whatever it was, unbeknownst to me, it was going to change my whole life.

My long, brown hair stuck to my face. I was constantly having to blink rain out of my eyes. The grass I currently trudged through clung to my legs and feet, ripping out of the ground as I kept walking. My feet sunk in the mud with every step I took. It was almost as if the Earth was trying to keep me from reaching that porch.

I could feel water and mud leaking into my ratty old tennis shoes. Well, the rest of me was soaked. Why not my socks, too? My feet hit something hard. I looked down, and I could just barely make out cracked pieces of cement that were most likely part of a walkway at some point. Now, they were overrun by grass. The pieces crunched under my weight.

At first, when I reached the broken stairs, I thought the being laid out across them dead. He certainly looked it. He had gashes, bruises, and limbs sticking out at unnatural angles. He was muscled, and I could barely make out the slightest rise and fall of his chest. His hair was black, and it was tousled, spiking outwards at the tips, which fell to his chin in layers. He almost looked human. I would have thought he was, except that his skin was a light purple color. And that he was clothed in a skin tight green suit, which seemed to be glowing and flickering out, only to light back up again. A symbol was on his chest, a circle with a line on top of it and on the bottom of it. The suit was the only thing that looked the slightest bit familiar.

It was on the news, about a year ago. A man, in a suit very similar to the one I was looking at right now, had saved hundreds of lives, by summoning a green racetrack out of thin air. A helicopter had gone down, but the racetrack had eventually returned it safely to the ground, with only minimal casualties.

There had been a few more occurrences of the same kind of thing, of the man flying through the sky, sitting on rooftops, and battling the entity he referred to as Paralax. He would disappear with no notice for a time, and then reappear just as quickly.

They had called him a Green Lantern. Most of the images I had seen **– **almost all of which were blurry beyond recognition **– **showed him to have short, brown hair. He, like the Green Lantern before me, seemed to have been quite muscular as well.

I found myself kneeling on the broken steps next to the wounded alien. They creaked and groaned under my weight, threatening to collapse right out from under my knees. The stairs shifted slightly, and the alien hissed in pain, his eyes flying open. They were a bronze color, and the streetlights' glow glinted in their depths.

He took in the wood above him, and his eyes dulled to a more brown color. He closed his eyes again, and let his head loll to the side. I had stopped breathing, and found myself needing air. I drew in a breath, and got startled when his eyes flashed open again. I froze as his bronze eyes turned black. Why were his eyes changing _color?_

His now black eyes roved over my body, stopping when they landed on my face. "What…" he started to cough up blood. I knelt forward quickly, and slipped a hand under his back. He kept his eyes on me as I, as gently as I could, helped him to sit up slightly. I knew he couldn't do it himself. It looked like too many bones were broken for that. I didn't have much medical experience, but I did know that his coughing up blood **– **_pink blood?_ **–** meant he had internal bleeding. After a few moments, he seemed to calm down a bit, and, eventually, he did stop coughing.

He attempted talking again. "Wha…what…planet…?" And the blood came again. When he stopped shaking and coughing, I spoke, for the first time.

"What planet are you on?" Looking relieved, he nodded. "Earth." He looked puzzled for a moment. Then understanding dawned across his pain-filled features.

"Hal… J-Jordan. Two Eight...One Four." He managed. I felt my eyebrows furrow. Hal Jordan must be that Green Lantern on the news. 2814? What did that stand for? No matter, he needed help.

"You…you need medical attention. Badly." I said as I looked at the blood. But, already, his breaths were starting to grow shallower and shorter. "Quickly." I started fishing around for my cell phone in my pocket.

"No time." He looked tired. No. No, no, no. "Too late." I watched as his one good hand reached over to his right. He grabbed onto a green ring, and pulled it off. Slowly, the green suit melted away, leaving him in black pants. His chest was as bad as the rest of him. Worse, even.

"Hey, hey. Calm down." But he already looked calm. Too calm. "Don't die on me. That's a horrible first impression." He let out a soft chuckle, and pressed the green ring into my hand.

"I do hope…" He coughed. "…you're right for the ring. Place it on your finger. It will…take…you…to…Oa…and…" I gripped his hand.

His eyelids started to droop. "No! Keep your eyes open! _Do not die on me!_" But it was too late. He was already gone. His eyes had dulled. His chest ceased to rise and fall. I sat there, for what seemed like hours, as his skin grew colder and colder. It was probably only minutes, really. Thunder crackled. With a small hesitation, I drew my hand across his face, and closed his eyes, which would never startle me by changing color again.

I leaned back onto the balls of my feet. He was dead. There was nothing I could do, now. I had never seen someone die before. Before this moment, I had never seen the light drain from them, slackening their limbs and features. Eyes were just eyes. Devices used for vision, and came in all sorts of different colors. I had read books that also described them as windows to the soul. I had never really believed that. They were just eyes. Just another part of the body. I couldn't doubt it, though. Not now. Not when I had just seen the light, life, and possibility drain out of the eyes before me.

I turned away from him, and lowered myself until I was sitting. As I gazed out at the rain and lightening, as I listened to the booming thunder, I got lost in thought.

What to do, what choices were laid before me? Two choices. The first one was…simple. Very simple. I could set this strange ring down on the ground, or the steps I currently sat on. I could get up; brush myself off of this experience. I could start back through that unkempt lawn of grass, and start running back home through the rain. I could run back to civilization. I could walk through the doors of my apartment building, and greet the security guard, Mr. Wells. I could take the elevator up to my room, and forget all about this. I could forget this ring, this person, this death.

The second one was…well…not so simple. I could accept this. I could accept the unknown. I could take this green ring, and slide it onto my finger. But what would happen after that? What _was_ a Green Lantern? Where was this...Oa? What did the numbers 2814 mean? What, or who, was Paralax? Did I really want to know? Enough to justify taking the chance, and hand myself over blindly to the unknown?

I thought for a long time. I don't know how long, but it was a while. It stormed on and on. The sun hadn't risen yet. The houses all around me were vacant and vandalized. I thought. And thought. And thought.

I stood up, and looked around me. At the grass. At the very few trees. At the houses. At the alien. At the ring. I looked up at the sky somewhat hesitantly, and instantly got doused with water. Without looking down, I slipped the ring onto my right, middle finger. My decision was made.

**Author's Note:****Sorry guys! I totally didn't mean to take that long to update. My computer has been on the fritz, I had a lot of stuff to do, and, well, I didn't have much inspiration. And, as much as I wish I could, I can't write without my muse. Hopefully the next chapter won't take as long as this one! ****Lita**


End file.
